The Behmor 1600 - New Coffee Roasting Appliance

[Fat Guy]

Oh yes. One type of bean that I tried from one of the unlabeled bags I had lying around from way back was very small. The drum didn't contain it well so I had to abort. Apparently there is to be a small-bean-capable drum released by Behmor at some point, I guess with a smaller wire mesh. But until then if you're a very-small-bean person this machine is not really usable.

[MGLloyd]

Some of my favorite coffees are the North Africans (Harrar, Sanini and Yirgacheffe) which are known for their smaller beans. I have done a couple batches of them, and found about 15-20 beans that had escaped the mesh and landed on the chaff collector. I imagine that if you have a small peaberry batch, more of them would fall out of the cylinder. I will be buying the smaller-mesh cylinder when it becomes available.

In terms of chaff cleanup, I open the door at about three minutes in the cooling cycle to cool down the beans quicker. Some of the chaff escapes when this happens. For the remaining chaff in the edges and corners of the machine, I give it a couple shots of my Dust-off compressed gas computer duster. I then clean up all the chaff and I am done. Just because I like to keep things sparkling, I wipe down the interior and exterior of the machine after each use with a damp microfiber cloth.

Edited December 7, 2007 by MGLloyd (log)

[Fat Guy]

Yeah, the decaf Colombian RSWP that I roasted earlier had a small bean size. A few fell through the mesh into the chaff collector but it was no big deal. But if you go to the very, very small size beans then you've got troubles, at least until the new drum becomes available.

[Fat Guy]

Last night I discovered seven pounds of green beans I'd forgotten about, sitting in a big canister under a bunch of other stuff. I'm parting with the Behemoth on Monday, so I figured I'd do another round of experiments. I spent all morning roasting to different levels of doneness on different programs. I did everything from a light roast to a beyond-Starbuck's roast and was pleased with all the results. Based on tasting today, I'm now sure of what I said before: that the Behmor produces a mellower roast than the i-Roast. In the end I mixed together all the different batches to achieve a really nice blend (all the same bean, but several different roasts). I'm going to miss the Behmor, but it's just too big to keep around in my apartment kitchen.